All Of You
Azure
Because Of You
The Birth Of The Blues
Can't You See I've Got The Blues?
Easy To Love
Frankie And Johnny
The Gypsy In My Soul
Here Lies Love
Hey There!
I Ain't Got Nobody
I Don't Care Who Knows
I'll Know
In A Persian Market
Just One Of Those Things
Lonesome Road
Love Me Or Leave Me
My Funny Valentine
Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone
September Song
Smile Darn Ya Smile
Something's Gotta Give
That Old Black Magic
Wagon Wheels
The Way You Look Tonight
You Are My Lucky Star
Yours Is My Heart Alone.
Sammy Davis Jr with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra,
Dave Cavanaugh and His Music, Morty Stevens
and his Orchestra, Joseph Gershenson and his
Orchestra and Jack Pleis and his Orchestra

The least interesting things
here and the most dated are the impressions
of other singers and actors. Davis had a penchant
for this, and his record companies were certainly
keen to cash in on it. So Davis gives us such
tried and tested characters as fellow Rat
Packer Francis Albert, Nat Cole, Billy Eckstine,
Vaughn Monroe and Mel Tormé. Add to
the mix Cary Grant (actually rather good),
James Cagney, Edward G Robinson (actually
rather bad) and Jerry Lewis and we have a
recipe that now seems rather tired. Back in
1949, or in 1954, of course that wasn’t necessarily
the case.

Davis was a hoofer as well
and one supposedly taught by Bojangles himself
– the man to whom Davis paid eloquent tribute
in a beautiful song, one in which the lachrymose
and the verismo are held in precarious but
ultimately successful balance. He recorded
it very much later than this run of his earliest
discs, which begin in January 1949 and end
in November 1955, neatly anticipating the
fifty-year copyright period.

We start out of chronological
sequence with the irrepressible brio of Something’s
Gotta Give and pass through show and film
tunes, standards, and a fair few killer dillers.
He tap-dances on Smile Darn Ya Smile. And
he scats – oh how he scats. He’s still finding
himself on something such as 1949’s Please
Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone where
the bop licks and Ella-ish ticks are all too
formulaic even when propped up by his gigantic
personality. The post-War love-in with bongos
finds its nadir – and it’s a deep nadir -
in I Ain't Got Nobody where the hep
cat ends up sounding more like an alley cat.

But gradually he recorded
songs in arrangements more commensurate with
his talent. It helped to have a good rhythm
section behind him and Dave Cavanaugh’s band
did possess men like Alvin Stoller, Don Lamond,
Lee Young and that fine pianist Gerald Wiggins.
The bongos were the work of one Karl Kiffe,
though maybe he was only obeying orders. Even
so Davis’s occasionally garish exaggerations
– see Lonesome Road – were better channelled
in a vehicle such as The Birth of the Blues,
a song that suited his histrionic powers.
When song, arrangement and band fused then
Davis was as formidable a performer as any
on stage.

But then the relentless bravura
was part of his act and we’d have been the
poorer without it. These are good transfers
of good sounding Capitols and Deccas. Inconsistent,
yes, but always energising Sammy Davis is
charted here from his earliest days on record
to the cusp of his Hollywood and Broadway
stardom. Few were more talented.